2020

Dear friends, It has been a while since we have published an update on the house, the adoption, and life in general. As I write we (the world) are all under quarantine, a shelter-in-place order, due to the pandemic known as COVID-19 or the coronavirus. I'm attempting to work multiple jobs from home, while Randy continues to go to school during the week to provide lunches for the students in our community. But we've discovered that there is a lot that home remodeling, adoption, and life in general can teach us about how to quarentine. For example, today is the final day that our drywall crew will be at the house. Which is what they have been saying for the past three weeks. Just one more day... Home remodeling always takes longer than you think it will. And so does a quarentine. Every day the news is the same: we need more time. But you know what. The extra time in the home remodeling has been worth it. Because we've taken the time to do things right t...

Randy and I have entered the Home Study phase of the adoption! The first step in the Home Study process is a study of our hearts. We were asked to write a personal statement about our motivation for adoption. This was a powerful exercise, challenging us to look deep into our hearts and our histories, to uncover a story that God has been weaving all along. This is our story. OUR ADOPTION STORY My (Katie) mother was a kindergarten teacher for 25 years. During that time she often shared her concern for the children that she taught, and how her heart made her want to bring many of them home to experience the love and care that every child deserved. This planted a seed in my heart at an early age for the many children in the world whose biological parents can’t take care of them. When I became an adult myself, a few months shy of graduating from college (March 2002), I became pregnant. I always assumed I would have children of my own, and was thrilled at the prospect of becomin...

October was a busy month, filled with new adventures! I took on two part-time jobs, starting on the same day! One of those positions came with the title, “Wilmington Yearly Meeting Coordinator”. Coordinator does describe some of what I do – coordinating meetings for the Quakers in Ohio and Tennessee. But “informer” and “encourager” feel like more important roles as I get started. Like most U.S. denominations, the Quakers have experienced a series of splits in the church over our position on gay marriage. Some Friends (as Quakers are affectionately called) believe we must declare a position one way or another. Other Friends believe that each congregation should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to perform a marriage in their church. Regardless of the denomination, regardless of whether they side “for” or “against”, churches have been filled with pain and loss and distrust. And we’ve realized we don’t really know one another. Which is where I come in!  My ...

On Saturday, September 14, my husband Randy and dad Tom were finishing putting soffits under the eaves of the second story of our house. Dad was on his way down the ladder and Randy was up above him on a walkboard. The ladder where Dad was standing buckled, folding beneath him. He said it felt like the ladder was ripped right out from under him. That is the last thing he remembers. Randy also remembers feeling like the floor was pulled out from under him. He fell 20+ feet, landing squarely on top of my dad. This perfect landing saved Randy's life and spared him from major injuries. Dad, taking the brunt of both their falls, sustained 8 broken ribs and a punctured lung. We spent the next 15 hours at one hospital and then another. Dad had a chest tube for three days, draining the fluid from his lungs. He has been home since the 18th, but returns to Miami Valley Hospital today to see if his lungs and ribs are showing signs of healing. Please join us in praying that he...

This month I completed a writing/editing project I have been working on about how to triumph when you are going through life's inevitable trials. Apparently saying "yes" to this project was akin to praying for patience: I was given plenty of opportunities to "practice". (If you've never prayed for patience before, do so carefully!) During this period of writing about how to triumph over trials, my ex-husband died. My mom got E.Coli ... twice. My husband took a staple-gun to the face. My step-daughter was in a car accident. My niece broke her wrist (on my watch, no less). My brother-in-law had a heart attack, followed by a stroke. My aunt injured her back. Another family member went into temporary foster care. Both our dogs have been sick. I ended up in the clinic after an encounter with a rusty nail. And those are just the trials in my immediate family that I know about! Sheesh! Would someone please pray that my next project is on prosperity?! Chan...

May was a really incredible month for us, filled with other peoples' overwhelming generosity. But before I fill you in on that, let me rewind a bit to last December. In December, Randy and I went to San Felipe. Our primary motivation was to spend Christmas with the kids at the orphanage. But we had a very important secondary motivation: to go to DIF (children's services) to inquire about adoption. While living at Sonshine Hacienda, Randy and I obviously grew very attached to the children. Over 40 kids were part of our lives while we lived in San Felipe. Some for just a few days. Others were there at the children's home when we first visited in 2016, and continue to live there today. They all made a lasting impact on us, but we connected with three boys in particular. So it was those three brothers that we asked about when we went to DIF (pronounced Deef). We were met with a familiar face when we arrived at the offices -- a woman we had worked with on numerous occas...

Lent -- the 40+ days leading up to Easter -- is a big deal to me. God always nudges me toward something that will draw me closer to Him and His will for my life. One year I read through the entire Bible in 40 days. Another year I walked across Spain, meeting and marrying my husband. Last year I donated $40 a day to 40 different organizations. And this year I felt God leading me to prayer. Because the theme is 40, I felt challenged to pray for 40 minutes a day for all 40 days. Confession: in every Lenten season I have fallen short of my goal. I did read the entire Bible, but it took me slightly longer than 40 days. I did walk across Spain, but again, it took more than the alloted 6 1/2 weeks. I did donate to 40 organizations, but I got derailed last year when my grandmother died, so those donations ended up being spread out over the course of several months. And this year? No exception. I started off strong. And so did God. I kept a notebook handy because he was so chatty. But the...

Let me start by apologizing for leaving you hanging last year. Last I wrote we were being cast as characters in a Truman Capote novel, witnesses to the crime of the century in Kansas. That was "Leg 21." There were other legs. We went on to tour museums in Missouri and stay at an epic campground in Illinois and sleep in the Friends United Meeting parking lot in Indiana and eventually made it to Ohio, where we slept in the RV in a short-term parking lot at the Columbus airport waiting for Randy's daughter, Danielle, to arrive to retrieve Van. Once Van and Danielle were safely back in California, Randy and I hit the road again. We went to Toledo for hot dogs, slept in a Home Depot parking lot in Michigan, climbed sand dunes in Indiana and swam in Lake Michigan with my brother and his kids, played baseball on the Field of Dreams and attended my grandmother's memorial service in my second childhood home of Hubbard, Iowa. We broke into the home where my grandmot...

As if the Geological Center of the United States, Deadwood, Sturgiss, Spearfish Canyon and Mt. Rushmore weren't enough, we discovered that South Dakota has so much more to offer. Too much to explore on this trip. But we did add in a few more stops. From Mt. Rushmore it is less than a half-hour drive to get to Crazy Horse Memorial . Like Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse is a carving in the side of a mountain, mostly created from strategically placed dynamite blasts. Korczak Ziolkowski, one of the men who worked on Mt. Rushmore, was approached by Chief Henry Standing Bear and the Lakota people to create a monument to one of their own heroes. Ziolkowski agreed with one stipulation: that he would never take any government funding--his own way of protesting the unfair treatment of our government on native people. Ziolkowski turned down multiple million-dollar offerings from the government in his lifetime. It is for this reason that the monument remains a work-in-progress to this day. The ...